How to deal with legacy code ?

[EtienneDepaulis]

You have just landed in a legacy code base and you are supposed to start working with it :) What are the life saving techniques to avoid being drowned by the lines of code ? What are the best practices ?

I've started working with @pilap82 2 weeks ago on his project and have been confronted with this situation. I was thinking of sharing a few techniques I had to implement and have your advice/feedback on them :)

Do you think it could be an interesting topic for a small talk ??

[dmathieu]

Definitely. October?

[EtienneDepaulis]

Might be a little too soon, I was thinking of november in order to have more material :)

[dmathieu]

November is fine too :)

[michaelbaudino]

It seems great for a talk. It's a situation every single freelancer has been facing (and fighting with) someday ! Let's do it in November, then :-)

[pilap82]

@EtienneDepaulis are you suggesting that my code base was messy? ;) (it was, for sure :))

[EtienneDepaulis]

@pilap82 :) I'm just trying to figure out if my survival techniques are the best :sunglasses:

[franckverrot]

A group reading of some excerpts of Working Effectively With Legacy Code http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052 could be great :-)

[pilap82]

Lyon RB turns into a book club. great! ;)

On 27 sept. 2013, at 13:57, Franck Verrot notifications@github.com wrote:

A group reading of some excerpts of Working Effectively With Legacy Codehttp://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052could be great :-)

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Etienne Depaulis notifications@github.comwrote:

@pilap82 https://github.com/pilap82 :) I'm just trying to figure out if my survival techniques are the best [image: :sunglasses:]

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/lyonrb/wishlist/issues/20#issuecomment-25239831 .

Franck Verrot https://github.com/franckverrot https://twitter.com/franckverrot — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[EtienneDepaulis]

Hey guys,

After some thoughts, I don't think I have enough material to cover this topic :| I have plenty of other talk ideas but I'm also supposed to change flat in the following weeks so I might not have the time to prepare one for the next meetup :(

Cheers

[dmathieu]

I've removed you from the december meetup. Do you think you will do this talk in january or a bit later? Or should we close this issue?

[EtienneDepaulis]

We should close :) (have more practical talks in mind)